Rainbow Dash receives a strange letter in the mail inviting her to The Grand Galloping Galla! Not just as a guest, but on a date! Shes a bit hesitent at first considering what happened last year. But Pinkie insists that she does. Who sent the letter?

When Pinkie woke up, Gummy was gone. He'd been acting so strange lately- Heck, everybody had been acting strange... And now he's just disappeared without a trace-While searching for her pet, Pinkie may find a truth she didn't want to f

This was really deep but really nice at the same time. I loved it. It was really well written. Something I liked a lot about this story is that the real pinkie was trapped and she came back out, instead of all the other stories i have read where pinkie is a clone, the clone goes back in the pool, and then Pinkie no longer exists. Yours was different and I loved it. It also had A happy/ bittersweet ending instead of the things that make me want to sob (and sometimes do). Loved that about it too. Just saying this again, I LOVED THIS!!!

This was quite good. A couple small things I'd like to point out, though:

1) An error here and there, usually involving commas. Fairly few and far between; it wasn't that distracting, but you could use an editor.

2) Pacing could use a teensy bit of work. I feel like this story could have actually been longer. Hard to say for sure, though.

3) Another thing is the trip to the mirror pool. I missed the single line where is says that they got there, and I was confused. You didn't even really say they were traveling. They were just kind of . . . there.

4) The final thing is paragraph formatting. This is preference, really. The formatting you are using looks cluttered to me. I prefer to use the unindented spaced paragraphs format, like in this comment. I think it is much easier for readers to follow, but that's just me giving you options.

4216764 Glad you liked it!1) I'll try to blame that on not having a chance to read it over thoroughly. Deadlines creep up awful fast.2) Yeah, you're definitely right here. It's a weakness in my writing, and I'm working on it.3) This is probably also part of the pacing problem; I'll give it some thought. I don't generally like being redundant, though – so make sure to read carefully.4) You could be right. I haven't had a chance to really look over the formatting for the site here. All I can say is I like how it looks in my text editor.Thanks for pointing these out! I'll try to address these, if not here, in future stories.

Since they were magical synthetics, why would Twilight's spell to return them to the pool have affected the original Pinkie in the first place? Speaking in a 'realistic' sense, they could have just dumped them all back into the pool and the one that didn't melt was the real one.

Having to sort them out with the drying paint was a goofy, but rather contrived, solution.

It wasn't like the Homer Simpson clones, who were flesh and blood... and killed off with a shotgun.

42162114216958 Wow, guys. Thanks for the vote of confidence! I'm glad so many of you guys liked it. I wonder what'll happen when this shows up on the writers' training grounds... Only time will tell, I suppose. Now excuse me for a moment, I've got to go deflate my ego.

4217452 Yeah, I got the impression that, for there to be any real suspense, the "return to mirror pool" spell had to have worked on the real Pinkie as well. Combine that with one point during which Twilight starts indiscriminately firing her lazor, and poof! Goodbye real Pinkie. This Pinkie is just the one lucky enough to be last mare standing.

There are only three things our brain really does. There’s the senses, including actions; there’s thinking; and there’s memory. The senses are the batter, they’re raw and they go into the oven, and when they come out, they’re cupcakes – memory. But in the middle is the baking, changing batter into cupcakes, changing senses into memory. And that’s all thinking is, Twilight. It’s what it feels like to be baked.

You, my friend, are a genius. Nothing less than a genius. Not just because of that quote, either, it's the whole story. The idea of Twilight sending the wrong Pinkie back into the pool has been done many times before, but I've never seen this take on this idea.

I also really like stories that don't waste time with overly detailed descriptions of everything. "Then they walked over there. The walk wasn't long, but not that short either. As they walked a butterfly was fluttering it's wings, and the warm summer wind was flowing." No. All you can say is "They walked there." Just like you did (although, you can go wrong with this kind of writing, you didn't). I feel like sme people may complain about pacing, but I like it when stories go straight to the point, without feeling too rushed.

This is how I felt everything in your story transitioned, including scenes and emotions:

The video's great, but that transitioning is not really good for something that's supposed to evoke empathy or sympathy for the characters. It's kind of distracting.

I was expecting a walk to the mirror pool, or some long talk before meaning sunk in, or actual research instead of immediately deciding she's a clone. Instead, too bad: you're already at the mirror pool! What's that, you wanted to be more sure about things? Well you should have thought about that five seconds ago!

4221345 Well, there was a walk to the mirror pool, but you're right that my transitions need work. Still, I'm never going to be one for long descriptions or slow transitions.The pictures are... weird, but they don't really clarify anything. They're just mildly disturbing.

Other than the transitions though, the only real problem I had was how easily everypony accepted things. (That's what I meant by emotional transitions) Technically those are still transitions though.

Your mind tends to fill in gaps when reading your own story though, which makes fixing that hard. I think the best way to check for transition problems would be to have someone pre read or edit your stories. Barring that, you could try re reading a day or week later, but your mind would still fill in some gaps.

4222232 Well, they are friends, and they tend to trust each other.I hope that didn't get too much in the way of your enjoying the story... if you did, that is.Thanks for the criticism, though. I'll take it to heart.

Short but sweet, definitely an interesting take on a deeply problematic episode. It would have been a much nicer episode if the clones had chosen to go, like this one did. Also, I know that technically, people are more than just memories, but they certainly are a big part. :)

((On a side note, if you haven't already seen The Machine on existential comics, you might find it relevant. Sadly, their other comics aren't so good.))

Let's not forget that during the course of this story, Twilight would have had to come to realize that in her worry for this clone she's sending back to the pool to die, she killed all the others herself. If she's going to assign the status of 'independent lifeform' to a magical avatar, then she retroactively assigned it to the previous incarnations of Pinkie Clones. All of which she put to the banishment laser.

Or since they're not technically flesh and blood, she can just consider them persistent image spells and not feel bad about them at all, including this one. Since she chose the former, I wonder how that's affecting her psyche at the moment.

4224018The initial clones are, mentally speaking, tabulae rasae roughly imprinted with some basic memories and a guiding impulse (in this case, fun). Their memories are vague and incomplete, and not even rightly their own. The batter's been poured into the mold and given shape, but it has not yet been baked in the fires of life. When Twilight returned the original mirror clones to the pool, she was just pouring the batter out of the molds and back into the bowl. All the potential that was in them still remains, as they had nothing that was really their own.

Pinkie Clone has been baked. From those memories, with time and thought and experience, she has become something uniquely her own. Something that can't be returned to the aether any more than a muffin can be turned back into batter. That she so strongly resembles Pinkie Pie is because that was the mold she was poured into.

Of if you don't like muffin analogies, you might say that she started with only a mind and body, but over a year and a half, Pinkie Clone grew a soul.

If we're defining soul as "a set of experiences gained over time" rather than "magical spark of life" (still convinced we saw Twilight's soul during her apotheosis) then yes, that makes sense. Otherwise it just means she's a riper clone. Like a grape left out in the sun.

If Twilight hadn't bothered banishing them, there'd be raisins running all over Ponyville all indistinguishable from the original when they were once easily-identifiable as grapes.

Obviously the moral of the story is that Twilight is racist against fruit.

4224702 Well done, you articulated much more elegantly exactly what I meant to say in my comment. Also, for consistency, I would have stuck with cupcakes, but, you know – whichever tastes better to you.

4224747I'm glad you liked it, I'm always hesitant to link things in the comments for fear that I'm distracting away from the topic at hand (which is the story) but it seemed like it was right up your alley. (Its a bit of a tongue in cheek story, but it turns out that empathizing with our future selves is one of the primary ways people are motivated to make long term plans, and why sociopaths are so bad at long term planning.)

As for memories, I have some PhD friends who could talk your ear off, but you'll have to settle for the condensed version. In the broadest sense, any experience that is encoded, stored, and retrieved is a memory, but there are lots of things that people are not consciously aware of, that influence their behavior in ways that change based on repetition and their environment.

When most people think of memories, they're thinking of Declarative Memories, which are things consciously recalled. There are also procedural memories, which use a different part of the brain, and are the things people use when they can remember how to punch in a code without actually remembering the numbers. There are also electrochemical processes involved in emotional cueing, which could possibly be considered memories in the broadest sense, are more of a non-conscious training of reflexive responses. People with anger management issues often train themselves, unknowingly, to react strongly without conscious input in an emotional way, by repeatedly acting in ways that strengthen those emotional responses.

Out of all those Pinkie Clones stories this I got to love the best. It's really well-written and the ending is quite charming,not to mention a different take on the clone story so it's really interesting to say the least!

hmmm....judging what I see this is your second story? If it is then your doing a really good job so far!

4227661 Yes, it's my second pony story. I've written some other stories before, though it's been a while since I've had time to write. I must confess I haven't read any of the other Pinkie clone stories, so this idea was completely out of my head. Still, I might read them later, see what they did with the concept. From what I hear a lot of pinkies died . Thanks, and I'm glad you liked it!

4228543 Thanks! If you don't mind me asking, what exactly was wrong with it? I've gotten some comments about pacing, perhaps you have something further to say? We can never be perfect but it sure as hay feels nice to try.

4224717 - Interesting story. Definitely a fave. One mistake I noticed though, was that the Mirror Pool seemed to be above ground. It's actually inside a cave accessed via some kind of tunnel. Tom the rock was used to block up the entrance.

4230356 Good point, it didn't occur to me. Still, if I pretend that I just didn't want to mention them going down a deep hole in the ground during their walk, maybe people won't notice. Thanks for reading, and glad you liked it!